Botanical Beauty

Angeleno artists bloom via the Internet

Detail of a work by Simmons & Burke shown at Art Basel Miami Beach

Highbrow art is cool--we?ve enjoyed everything from huge blocks of melting ice at Santa Monica Airport to pinwheels in a museum--but sometimes we just want to walk through a gallery filled with beautiful imagery. We?re looking forward to an opening with the best of both worlds this Friday, when a Beverly Boulevard gallery will feature gorgeous flowers with a conceptual catch--they are all plucked from the Internet.

Los Angeles-based duo Simmons & Burke first became known for creating seven-foot-tall digital collages filled with more than 5,000 snippets culled from online. Since 2006 their cacophonous work--which includes layered sounds heard by gallery-goers on headphones hung in a separate part of the exhibition space--has drawn raves and even comparisons to Hieronymus Bosch?s Garden of Earthly Delights.

Their latest show, at the Michael Kohn Gallery, promises to be the most visually pleasing yet. For ?Still Lifes and Common Names,? the artists started with a list of common plants that grow in the U.S., chosen just because they liked the names--and the result is both overwhelming and calming. To make each piece, they laboriously built Photoshop palettes of upwards of 5,000 images to choose from--so the finished work is a testament to patience, dedication and organization.